


All Things Are Mine Since Truth I Found

by Mithrigil



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Gratuitous Radiohead, Orwellian Conditioning, Other, Pre-Canon, Spoilers, Survival Stories, The Revolution Will Be Televised, creepy bastards, he was something of a looker, how can I keep from singing?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-05
Updated: 2011-02-05
Packaged: 2017-10-15 10:34:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/159956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithrigil/pseuds/Mithrigil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And here you thought winning your Games would let you off the hook, Haymitch. How very wrong you were.  2+2=5.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Things Are Mine Since Truth I Found

“The roof of the Training Center, really?”

“Well, where else is there to go but up, when you’re from District Twelve?” There isn’t a studio audience in this interview, but Haymitch hears one of the cameramen snickering inside his suit. He turns to that camera in particular, lets it see him smile, makes them have to use it or lose his words. “Yeah, I went up there after training, a couple times. I pitched a stone over the side, you can guess what happened, and I remembered that I’d never seen what happens at the edge of the Arenas, how big they are, how they fence us in. So I figured I’d look.”

“To be honest, I thought you were trying to escape,” Flickerman says, smiling along with Haymitch. His lips and hair are the color of coins left out in acid rain, of copper tubes run ragged, of mold right in the heart of bread. His teeth and face are paper-white. He’s as much a monster as the jabberjays and butterflies back in the Arena. Haymitch wonders if they made him in the same vat. “But it’s you, Haymitch. I should have known better.”

“Nah, that’s what I wanted everyone to think,” Haymitch explains.

“Everyone? Even potential sponsors?”

“A sponsor smart enough to sponsor me would have to be smart enough to see through what I was doing. District Twelve, remember? We don’t tend to get sponsors at all. So why bother trying?”

Flickerman nods, leans a little further back into his corner of the couch. “You did manage to get a few when you teamed up with Maysilee.”

Haymitch knew they’d bring her up, knows that they’ll bring her up every time he has to face his Games. She lived and died again yesterday when they sat him in front of a projection screen as big as the surface area of his entire house. He watched bright candy-colored birds the size of hovercrafts stab her with perfect resolution, and he never felt smaller.

“Didn’t do her much good,” Haymitch says, because anything else puts him right back in the Arena.

“Well, it got you both into the top eight—her to fifth place! Even if you hadn’t won, that would have been impressive, especially for District Twelve. In fact, and Persil can correct me if I’m wrong, that’s the farthest anyone from Twelve has gotten who didn’t also win.” Flickerman looks offscreen to where Persil is standing with Haymitch’s stylist Troy and some more cameramen. “Is that so?”

“It’s true,” Persil says. “She got the farthest of any I’ve ever mentored, except you, Haymitch.”

Haymitch doesn’t let himself think about what could have been. It’s too easy to fall into that trap, too easy to confuse it for what could _be_. “Well then between the two of us, let’s hope we start taking them even further than that,” he says, giving Persil the smile he definitely deserves, after all Haymitch has put him through.

“Let’s hope,” Persil agrees. “It’ll be a nice change, not having to do it alone.”

“Back to the issue of the forcefield,” Flickerman says, and Haymitch can feel him zooming in just like the cameras. “You were really going to the edge to see if you could use it?”

“More to see if it was the same kind, but yeah,” he says, maybe a little fast, but talking about Maysilee is, so far, his least favorite thing about being alive.

“And what would you have done if it wasn’t?”

“Everything does something,” Haymitch says, crossing his arms and leaning his elbows on the knees of his suit. “Everything in that Arena did something you didn’t expect it to. Someone designed it that way, made a rule that there’s poison in everything you see, that there’s lava in that snowy mountain, that those sweet little squirrels are hunters, not prey. I won because I knew the rules better than anyone in the Arena. Knowing them better than the Gamemakers? I have to say, that surprised me.”

It surprises him again, when no one on the soundstage laughs with him.

-

“I didn’t coach you to say that,” Persil says, as soon as they shut themselves in the cab to go back to the Training Center.

“You didn’t coach me to do a lot of things.” Haymitch grins, and tells the driver where they’re going before either Persil or Troy gets the chance to. They’re fencing him in, one by either window. Haymitch won’t admit that he’s thankful. These cars drive too fast.

Persil sighs, looks older than he should. The lights wheeling by outside make the grey in his temples stand out, make the rest of his hairline retreat even further back along his scalp. They missed a long scar on his head, Haymitch knows, when they pieced him together after his own Games thirty-one years ago. Haymitch wonders how far back it goes. “Well, that’s it. As far as I know, you’re done until the tour. Anything you want to take home with you?”

“I’m taking enough home,” Haymitch says. He looks sidelong at Troy, and asks him, “Any more suits?”

“Some for the tour, but I haven’t made them yet.” Troy says. “The prep team should’ve packed everything else already. I’m pretty sure they’ll leave you mostly alone until winter, but I’ll be in touch. Your new house has a phone, you know.”

“Don’t call too much, people might get the wrong idea.”

Troy laughs—with him, not at him, though Haymitch clearly remembers a few untoward and overheard comments about what Troy would like to do to Haymitch’s backside. At least Troy has the decency to blush and be slightly ashamed, though the blush shows up weird on his silvery skin, and looks more like he’s tarnishing under his eyes. “Don’t forget, I dress you. I can give them any ideas I want.”

“And you will, won’t you.” Haymitch laughs too. It’s strange, to be alive and laughing and done. It’s not going to stop being strange. But it still feels like all the knots in his shoulders and belly and chest have been untied and unwound and then coiled into neat rows, like the wires in Armeria’s shop back home. (It’s not far from the truth, considering they had to put his digestive system back together after the Games, but as metaphors go it’s the least gruesome one he can think of right now.)

(And there aren’t any scars, like there isn’t any hair. Haymitch had liked the hair leading down around his navel. Donna had liked it too. She’ll miss it, Haymitch thinks, if she doesn’t dump him for what happened with Maysilee.)

That’s a good concern to have. Much better than _how are we going to get enough food to last the summer?_

“Were you betting on me?” Haymitch asks both of them.

“We can’t bet,” Troy answers. “But honestly? No.”

“Of all four of you, yes,” Persil says, “but overall? Hoping, more than betting. I’ve learned not to bet, but I haven’t given up hoping.”

Greer Bridges used to gather up all the empty bottles in town so that her mom and dad could run liquor to the Hob. Stearn Hawthorne was the youngest brother of five, had never taken out tesserae, got himself reaped anyway. Maysilee Donner was a twin. “You could’ve hoped for any of us,” Haymitch says.

“I did.” Persil’s smile is heavy, but clearly there. “But you’re the one who won. Don’t ever forget that, Haymitch.”

“I can’t. I’m alive.”

Haymitch didn’t mean it to be funny, but they all laugh anyway, shifting awkwardly against each other in the backseat of the cab. They’re still laughing, about other things at least, when they pull up to the Training Center, and when Troy trips on the curb that just makes everything funnier.

“Something to share with the class, Haymitch?” Alessia says, coming down the stairs to greet them.

“Yeah, a composition. _How I spent my summer vacation in the Capitol, assisting in the deaths of forty-seven children_. I think I’ll get an A as long as I remember how to spell ‘paroxysm’.”

District Twelve Representative Alessia Little doesn’t like being reminded that she brings children to the Capitol to die. Haymitch doesn’t like Alessia. It’s that simple. But he does like the way her purple-painted Capitol mouth gets even smaller, like she’s eaten a bad blackberry, every time Haymitch reminds her what she does for a living.

“Well, that explains why you’ve just gotten ordered to the Presidential mansion for dinner,” she snaps back with fake cheerfulness, just like she uses to say _and may the odds be ever in your favor!_ in the town square. “He’s expecting you in three hours! The prep team is waiting.”

“—What?”

“You’re having dinner with President Snow,” Alessia says. Her smile is more triumphant than she deserves. “It’s such an honor! I don’t even know if that happens to victors from other districts. Come on, Haymitch, don’t dawdle. And Troy, I hope you’ve got something in reserve for this, it wouldn’t do to send him to meet Snow in anything less than your best.”

Troy gives Haymitch a slap on the backside to nudge him up the stairs. “I’ve got just the thing,” he says, like he knows what’s going on, and Haymitch is frustrated enough _not_ knowing to say,

“I bet you do.”

“Nice of you to trust me.” Troy preens, and Haymitch is distinctly uncomfortable for the first time since surviving. He might not have scars, but just because the ache in his gut is entirely phantom doesn’t mean it’s painless.

 _-_

Haymitch has to admit, of all the outfits Troy’s put him in so far, he hates this one the least. It’s a three-piece dark blue suit, with pale grey pinstripes going every which way, vertical on the pantlegs, diagonal one way on the vest and the other on the jacket. A cream-colored shirt that doesn’t look like it was ever supposed to be white. No tie. Not much makeup. Comfortable coal-black shoes. His district token, a bracelet of dried apple seeds that matches the one he hopes Donna’s still wearing back home.

He can feel the guards at Snow’s mansion checking him out. Good for them.

It’s just like being walked into the Justice Building, like being reaped, and Haymitch knows it’s supposed to be. He’s sat down in a parlor even more plush than the mayor’s, told to wait on a couch with cushions that don’t yield. There are photographs on little round tables, whitewashed under bright glass lamps, bouquets of glowing white roses at either end of a hearth. It’s strange to see wood burning there without a tinge of coal, and the flames smell sweet, almost like caramel.

“Hi,” someone says in the doorway, just about as sweet.

Haymitch looks her over—a girl, reaping age but just barely, with hair that probably should be blond but is dyed crocus-blue, hanging in curls to her shoulders. She straightens out her dress over her knees, and he thinks she’d never last a day outside the Capitol, with how round her face is compared to how trim her frame is. “Hello,” he says. “You’re Snow’s daughter?”

She nods. “Call me Gloria. And you’re Haymitch Abernathy.”

“So I am. But just Haymitch is fine. Are you the one who asked me here?”

“No, Daddy wanted to see you. But he said we could all have dinner together.” She leans against the jamb of the door. “Can I come in?”

“Can I come out?” he teases. “It’s your house, isn’t it?”

She doesn’t laugh, but she does come in, which is as good an answer as he’s apt to get. She sits down on the couch and he sits next to her, and they make talk as small as Haymitch ever makes: how old she is (thirteen), what her favorite color is (surprisingly, orange), if she’s going to school to be anything special (a Gamemaker, someday, she hopes, but you don’t go to school for that). And she gets his answers to the same: sixteen-almost-seventeen in three weeks, silver, a machinist, which he might still do even if he doesn’t have to work. She asks what that is, gets him talking about how he doesn’t just go to school, he also works for Armeria Rawlins, who keeps the mining equipment in working order. If he hadn’t been reaped he’d hope to someday have her job but he still plans to help the miners out. She asks him how he goes to school and work together, isn’t there not enough time? And he answers, “Doesn’t matter how much time there is, when there needs to be money.”

“I can see why Daddy likes you so much,” she says, laughing and rolling her eyes.

“—Does he really?” Haymitch has only seen Snow once, and it was when they crowned him victor, and _likes you so much_ are not the words he would use to describe what he saw in Snow’s eyes up on that stage.

“Well he uses the same words to describe you as he uses for his advisors,” Gloria says.

The fire crackles. A log snaps. Then she smirks.

“Oh,” Haymitch says. Laughter happens, but awkwardly, and she laughs too, and that’s how Snow finds them.

“Haymitch,” Snow says, “so good of you to join us for dinner,” and now Haymitch knows where Gloria picked up her skill at appearing in doorways.

Somewhere in the back of Haymitch’s mind, Alessia is instructing him to stand up from the couch and address him as _Mister President_ and be gracious and demure and thankful.

Instead, Haymitch leans an elbow on the arm of the couch and asks, “I didn’t have much of a choice, did I?”

“Certainly not,” Snow says, as unruffled as his sober grey suit. “I see you’ve already met Gloria. She was so enthusiastic about your victory, Haymitch.”

“Well, she didn’t say as much.” Haymitch smiles at her. “But then, we weren’t talking for very long.”

“Let’s continue that conversation at the table,” Snow offers, and indicates with an arc of his arm that Haymitch should stand, come back out into the hallway. “I know your stomach may still be sensitive after your surgery, so I’ll understand if you’re not terribly hungry, but please, enjoy as much as you can.”

With a meal like the one set out for him, Haymitch can’t help but try. They start with a tart halved citrus fruit spilling out with figs and grapes and tiny unpeeled oranges—“It helps my digestion, and my heart,” Snow explains—and then a cold white bean soup with greens and spices cooked so that they crumble into spirals as soon as Haymitch’s spoon touches them. Dinner is half a roast duck each, served on the bone, and the skin is thick with salt and peppercorns and blackberry juice. Haymitch makes sure to eat every scrap of the duck and all of the roasted onions but doesn’t make it all the way through the long-grain rice, and he only samples the cheeses and soft ices they serve afterward, in part because he wants to keep the taste of the duck on his tongue but mostly because his insides are starting to complain.

And the conversation, all through, is careful but not strained, like walking off a bruised bone. Snow and Gloria talk, of course, and Haymitch learns more about Capitol schooling than he ever thought he would. The conversation turns, inevitably, to Haymitch’s Games and how exciting they were for Gloria, but Haymitch has been deflecting questions about that for two and a half days now, on camera and off, so it barely registers.

“When did you start thinking that you could win?” Gloria asks, pushing a trail of sorbet around her dish with the back of a spoon.

“Long before I got in the Arena,” he tells her, honestly. “It’s the kind of thing you think about, when you sign up for tesserae.”

“What are tesserae?”

“Grain rations,” he tells her, and knows Snow is keeping an eye on him. Well, good. “You can sign up for extra food for your family if you’re willing to risk putting your name up for Reaping more than once. Back home, I live with my mother and my little brother Reade, and I’ve been taking out tesserae for them since I turned twelve. So that’s three of us, times five years I’ve been counted, plus an extra for me each year, means I’ve been put into the drawing twenty times.”

“Prudent of you,” Snow says, “to think about your family from the start.” He takes a sip of water, and his eyes don’t leave Haymitch even after he sets the glass back down. “But to return to the matter of the Games themselves, Haymitch; you’ll be joining us in the Capitol as a mentor, won’t you.”

“Don’t think I have a choice about that either,” Haymitch says. “But yeah, I do. Persil’s been doing it on his own for years, it’s only fair.”

“And I think you’d be uniquely suited to it, Haymitch. Why, the circumstances of your victory this year must make you something of a hero back home.”

“I’ll know when I get there.”

“Yes,” Snow says. “You will.”

Dessert arrives, and Gloria (who hadn’t exactly been full of glee all through dinner) beams and clasps her hands together. “Daddy, really?”

Snow smiles. “Out-of-season or not, it’s a special occasion, and I thought Haymitch would enjoy them too.”

An Avox brings in a tray of six caramel apples on skewers, but they’re more elaborate than any apples—or even any cake—that Haymitch has ever seen. They’re striated in caramel and chocolate and nuts and candied cherries and piped frosting, and even if he can’t see a scrap of apple underneath all that Haymitch knows they’ll be tart and crisp and perfect.

Hatred and distrust and smugness all aside, Haymitch can’t help the genuine “Thank you,” that falls from his lips.

“So you do have caramel apples in District Twelve,” Snow doesn’t quite ask.

Question or not, there’s a long answer, a beautiful answer, about celebrating the first money Haymitch ever earned all for himself, about buying oil and soap and new shoelaces and going to Nicke Mellark’s house to trade the leftovers for a cake or something, but they’d sold the last cake that Haymitch could have afforded, and Nicke had sold him sugar and butter instead and picked four apples from the tree in his backyard, and they’d made caramel apples right there in the bakery together, one for Reade and one for Haymitch’s mother and one for each of them.

“We do,” Haymitch says. “All the parts to make them, anyway.”

“Well, if you like our spin on them, please, take the leavings home. They’d go to waste otherwise.”

“I’d be honored,” Haymitch says, and this time he does add, “Mister President.”

The coating on the apple is so thick that Haymitch has to cut it with a serrated knife. He eats slices of the apple on knifepoint, which makes Gloria stare and laugh, and Snow smile. Neither of them finish their shares, but Haymitch does his own, and Snow sends the Avox off to parcel up the three remaining apples.

“Now, Gloria,” Snow chides, “it’s about time you made a dent in your homework. I’ll make sure Haymitch says goodnight to you before he leaves.”

“Thanks, Daddy,” she says, and gets up from the table. “I’m glad we got to talk, Haymitch.”

“So am I, Gloria,” he says, and nods.

“And Haymitch,” Snow goes on, “would you mind if we spoke in my office a while?”

“It never matters if I mind, but no, I don’t.”

“This way, then.”

It’s a much longer hall between the dining room and the office, and the guards that line it don’t flinch at anything. The lamps on the wall seem to be a little farther apart, and Haymitch can see the faceted domes that mask security cameras glinting in the darkest corners. He waves at one as he passes. It’s strange that they’re so obvious here, when in the Arena Haymitch had only found three. Snow coughs, and Haymitch glares, but he fidgets with his bracelet and keeps his head high until they pass through Snow’s doubled office doors.

The first thing that strikes Haymitch about the office is the light, strangely warm and strangely natural. It’s night outside, it was already starting to get dark when Haymitch arrived at the mansion, but in here it’s like high noon in the meadow in spring. The second thing that strikes Haymitch is that even though the rest of the furniture is shining and carved and well-kept, there’s only one chair, and it’s behind Snow’s desk.

 _So the hospitality portion of the Games is over, and now, the trial begins,_ Haymitch thinks, and braces himself to stand for a good long time just as the double doors close.

Snow rounds his desk, but doesn’t sit down; he leans his hip against some papers and kitsch to push it aside, and then half-sits, bracing his arm on the corner. “You think yourself charming, don’t you, Haymitch.”

“And you think yourself able to get answers for questions you don’t ask,” Haymitch says. “But yeah, I have no reason not to.”

“No, I agree; you have every reason to think yourself charming, You won over the Gamemakers. You won over that Maysilee girl. I wouldn’t say you _won over_ Rouge but you definitely won instead of her, and you’ve won over Panem. And you’ve charmed my daughter—and that’s no small task, Haymitch, I don’t even manage that with any degree of consistency. I can only imagine how it must be for you at home. Are you as well-liked there as you are here, now?”

Haymitch clasps his hands behind his back, lets the seeds of the bracelet bite into his palm. “I’ll know when I go back. But honestly? Back home, I just tried to get by.”

“In your first interview with Caesar Flickerman, you mentioned a girlfriend back in District Twelve.”

“Donna,” Haymitch answers. “Donna Williston. Did your people interview her when I made the top eight?”

“No, not since you were allied with Maysilee. The directors didn’t want to dilute what they thought might become a relationship onscreen. But you and Donna have been together for some time, now.”

“A year and a half.”

“Are you sexually active?”

“—What?”

“It’s a simple question. Are you sexually active?”

“That’s none of your business.”

Snow smiles, and Haymitch sees a dot of red at the corner of his mouth. He looks Haymitch up and down, then blinks once, slowly, as if to clear sleep out of his eyes. “Your life is my business now, Haymitch. You’re a victor. You’re a victor from a district that requires you to be a mentor. You’ll be returning to the Capitol every year until you manage to change that, and while I’m sure that Persil and Troy and whoever replaces Alessia after she’s promoted will be helpful in starting you on that path. But the fact remains that you owe me your life and continued prosperity, and I expect a certain standard of behavior.”

“I don’t owe you the gooseshit on my shoes, Mister President,” Haymitch says before he even thinks to stop himself.

“Excuse me?”

“I didn’t win the Games because I beat the other tributes. I won the Games because I beat the system. I exploited and exposed a flaw in the Gamemakers’ design. Now I know you’re going to fix things so it can’t ever happen again, but you’re probably also going to hire new Gamemakers, since it can’t look good for a tribute to outwit them. I don’t owe you. You owe me. And you owe the one hundred District Twelve tributes who died so I’d have the chance to make your Gamemakers look like idiots.”

“Exactly one hundred, really?”

“Ninety-eight less one for Persil, plus four this year less me. One hundred.”

“It shouldn’t surprise me that you’ve counted.”

“It’s a nice round number.”

Nothing Haymitch says can stop Snow from smiling. “I’m glad we can be honest with one another, Haymitch. But you’re wrong. Well, you’re right about my needing to hire a few new Gamemakers, but the rest? Unfortunately for you, all I owe you, other than your pension, is due credit for your victory. Tributes come here and die in combat because the Districts have a debt to repay the Capitol and its administration, for throwing Panem out of balance. They pay that due, and as a concession to their commitment to bettering this nation, they have a chance of getting the occasional tribute returned to them alive. So please don’t confuse who owes what to whom, Haymitch. Your life is your due. Your life, and how you choose to live it from here on out. I give you _choice_ , Haymitch. I give you agency in your own future. But bear in mind that the choices you make have repercussions, equal and opposite reactions. You of all people should know that. That axe hit Rouge with just about as much force as she threw it. Barring friction, of course.”

“Of course,” Haymitch repeats, because if he doesn’t, he’ll say nothing, and that’s worse.

“Take off your jacket and roll up your sleeves,” Snow says.

Haymitch eyes the letter-opener on Snow’s desk, the sharp adornments in his bouquets, the jagged glass vases, the closed desk drawers that may well have knives in them. But he obeys anyway, shucks off his jacket and unbuttons the cuffs of his shirt and lets Snow know he’s not afraid.

“Show me.”

Haymitch lifts his arms, palms spread like he’s just shrugging.

Snow comes away from the desk, but not invasively close. “Maysilee did a good job sewing you up, it’s a pity we had to erase it,” he says, and it’s true, all the scars Haymitch ever earned are gone. “When that boy from District Four got you with your own knife last Thursday, I’m sure you thought you were done for.”

Left arm, wrist halfway to elbow, along the bone so it wasn’t that vital but deep, deep and stinging and already browning in the noxious air. It was that or his eyes or his life. “It was Saturday,” Haymitch corrects.

“Thursday,” Snow says. “It’s understandable that you lose track of time in the Arena.”

“I didn’t spend any time unconscious until the end,” Haymitch says. Bright warm light or not, his skin crawls with cold. “I was reaped on a Thursday. The Games began on Wednesday. The Careers attacked me and I teamed up with Maysilee on a _Saturday_.”

“Thursday,” Snow says again.

“ _Today_ is a Thursday.”

“Tuesday.” Snow shakes his head. “And you did spend quite a bit of time in surgery, so you don’t even have that excuse. Tuesday, Haymitch.”

There’s a tear-away calendar on Snow’s desk, proclaiming it to be Thursday, July 14th. Haymitch points. “Thursday.”

“It is what day I say it is.” Snow knocks the calendar off his desk without sparing it so much as a glance. “That doesn’t affect the grand scheme of things at all, does it? There are still three hundred and sixty-five of them in a year, three hundred and sixty-six in others. The sun still rises and falls at the beginning and end. Tuesday is just a name, Haymitch. Like July. Like December. A week doesn’t even have to have seven days if I say it doesn’t. And seven is such an inconvenient number, especially as three hundred and sixty-five goes, but who am I to tell the earth to turn a little slower?”

It lurches a little, for Haymitch, right then. He curls his fists and stands his ground, looks Snow hard in the eye. “It’s Thursday.”

“Your birthday is coming up, isn’t it? Gloria said as much.”

“August fifth. A Friday.”

“A Wednesday. You’ll be seventeen.”

“Yes. A _Friday._ ”

“I can’t change that, and I wouldn’t. But it will be a Wednesday, I’m afraid. Your time in the Arena has thrown off your clock. And again, it is what day I say it is,” he enunciates, like he’s teaching a child his letters, and Haymitch is insulted because he knows he’s somewhere in between. “We can stand here and argue about this until your train leaves without you tomorrow morning, but I do hope you’ll walk away at least knowing that. It is what day I say it is. Your birthday this year.”

“A Friday.”

“A Wednesday. This year’s Reaping.”

“A Thursday.”

“A Tuesday. The start of the Games.”

“Wednesday.”

“Monday. Your brother Reade’s birthday.”

“November twenty-eighth, and a Monday.”

“A Saturday. Your mother’s.”

“September first—”

“A Tuesday, this year. It’s Gloria’s birthday as well. I know it’s not traditional for you to appear in the Capitol until after your victory tour, but if she wishes to invite you, I’d say you’re more than welcome.”

“No thanks. That _Thursday_ I’ll be home with my mother.”

“And when is Donna Williston’s birthday, Haymitch.”

“March second. A Thursday.”

“A Wednesday.”

“ _Ha,_ I got you.”

“No, next year is a leap year, Haymitch. A Wednesday. And even then, you’re wrong, if it weren’t a leap year her birthday would fall on a Tuesday. What were you planning on getting her? A ring, to match that bracelet?”

The headache building up behind Haymitch’s eyes has to be a sugar crash.

“You could get her a very nice one, now, more than just apple seeds. Unless of course there’s one passed down in your family. Although it might not be prudent to put all your eggs in one basket, we all know you’re a charmer, Haymitch, and a heartbreaker if the Capitol ever saw one. Will she be turning seventeen or eighteen this coming year?”

“Eighteen.”

“On what day of the week?”

Haymitch breathes. He wonders if he’s breathed at all, since this game began. “Wednesday,” he says, curling his fists so tight he can feel the squared edge of his nails.

“And August fifth will fall on _what_ day, this year?”

“You tell me,” Haymitch snarls.

“Exactly.” Snow smiles—there’s that red tinge at the corner of his mouth again, but he wipes it away with his thumb. The way the light’s falling, Haymitch has to look at him or squint at anything else. “Now, I don’t for a second assume you actually believe me. I haven’t changed your mind. I haven’t changed the calendar. But I’ve changed your answer. And that’s all that matters, isn’t it? I don’t care if you obey me because you believe me or because you respect me or because you’re just fed up with playing. You’ll still tell me it’s Tuesday if I ask.”

“You don’t ask.”

“I will now. What day is it?”

Haymitch eyes the calendar on the floor, as much as he can in this light. “July fourteenth. Tuesday.”

“Excellent. Your train tomorrow should get you home by Friday.”

Haymitch thinks _Sunday_ as loudly as he can, but says nothing. He doesn’t let himself doubt how many days he spent in surgery, doesn’t let himself question the number of faces he saw Templesmith broadcast in the sky, doesn’t let himself consider that the calendar on the floor might be fake. This is a power game, and he knows it, and as long as he knows it Snow can’t truly win.

“Touch yourself,” Snow says.

“— _What?_ ”

“Undo your pants and touch yourself,” he repeats, and it’s barely a command at all, like _come in earlier tomorrow_ or _get that flour down from the shelf_ or _be careful getting back, it looks like rain_.

“If you think for one second I’ll—”

“What does it matter, Haymitch?” Snow isn’t smiling now, is leaning nonchalantly on the desk, and Haymitch has already taken two steps too close. “You’ve already proven yourself capable of disobeying me in mind and not in action. How is this any different?”

 _It’s different because I’m exposing myself to you. It’s different because it’s sexual. It’s different because it’s my body and not my mind. It’s different because there are cameras everywhere in the Capitol and just because I haven’t found the ones in this room yet doesn’t mean I don’t know they’re there. It’s different because I say it is and I say it is because you say it isn’t._

“I asked you a question, Haymitch.”

 _Yes,_ Haymitch thinks. _Yes, you did._

“It isn’t,” Haymitch says.

“Then do it. I know very well what you’ve been doing these past three weeks, and you’re young. I can imagine the opportunity might be a relief.”

“Fuck you.”

“No. Fuck yourself.” The way Snow’s mouth moves when he says that word makes Haymitch’s skin crawl, under scars that aren’t there anymore.

Nothing happens.

Nothing happens behind Haymitch’s eyes. Nothing happens in front of them. Nothing happens in the rest of his body either. His fingers hang slack. His breath lingers on his lips.

Snow waits, and dabs at the corner of his mouth, and doesn’t smile.

Haymitch lets his hand slide down to his fly, and unfastens it. The shorts the prep team made him wear are tighter than the ones he’d pick for himself, and he tugs those down too, lets the loose tails of his shirt cover as much of him as they can. He’s not hard, but he’s warm there, and uncomfortable, the way he sometimes gets when he watches Armeria bend over to fix the rigs.

And Snow barely looks at him, just spares him an acknowledging glance and then focuses on Haymitch’s eyes. Haymitch runs the heel of his palm down his skin and can’t help shutting his eyes. Donna’s watched him do this. Donna’s watched him do this so she’d know what to do when she touched him back. The seeds on the bracelet trail against his skin and he hasn’t done this to himself since he started wearing it and the thought sends a frisson straight down Haymitch’s legs that leaves nothing but heat where it started. It’s been weeks. He avoided doing it in the shower where he knows the prep team can hear him. He couldn’t in the hospital. He wouldn’t in the Arena, not lying next to Maysilee and _not for the cameras_.

“You’re taping this, aren’t you,” Haymitch says as he takes himself in hand and swells to fill it. “You sick bastard.”

“That didn’t stop you in the Arena, and it won’t stop you now.” Snow watches Haymitch’s hand pull, just once, and then clears a little more space on his desk, rifles through the papers. The letter-opener is still there, Haymitch sees. He still keeps going. He’s sturdy now, or at least that part of him is, the rest is having trouble standing with nothing to brace his arm on. His shirt clings to his backside. His pants slip lower, hobble his knees. His palm sweats, that makes it easier, back and forth and tight and twisting.

“Yeah,” Haymitch breathes, as much as he can with how it’s starting to come short. “Bet you want to keep it for a souvenir. You like watching kids jerk off for you, Mister President? Does it get you hard?”

Snow laughs, quietly, and shakes his head. He comes away from the desk, stands beside Haymitch, and Haymitch realizes they’re almost the same height, their eyes are level, their shoulders are level, their arms are level—

—he takes Haymitch’s left hand, and places it against his crotch.

“No,” Snow says, with proof. “It doesn’t.”

Haymitch flinches away, but away is forward, and he staggers and catches himself on the edge of the desk. He lets go of himself but he’s still hard and insistent and can’t help groaning when his groin comes in contact with the surface, can’t help the way his hips roll, want more touch, more friction.

“It doesn’t,” Snow repeats, behind him now, and close enough to smell the reek of the rose in on his lapel. “I’m not having you do this for my amusement, Haymitch. Your obedience is a serious matter.”

It takes every ounce of Haymitch’s self-command to keep his hands on the desk. “In action,” he says. “Not in mind. I get it. I get it, all right?”

“What day is it, Haymitch?”

“Tuesday.”

“How close are you to finishing?”

“Less close now than I was, you asshole.”

“And are you and Donna Williston sexually active?”

“We touch ourselves,” he answers without thinking, “we touch each other,” and his hand is on his groin again before he can stop himself. He _remembers_ , the way she kissed him in the Mayor’s house and told him he’d better come back, the way she looks straddling his thighs and working him hard, the way she kisses his hip and the hair that leads down past his navel and says, _more soon, more for both of us soon, you know how much I want you, Haymitch, so much I can’t stand it—_

“Well, she’ll be glad to know you’re healthy,” Snow says, circling the desk and sitting in the chair. He folds his hands on the desk mat and faces Haymitch. “I don’t think you’ll disappoint her.”

Haymitch can’t keep his eyes open anymore, the blood’s pounding too hard around them, around them and down through his neck and his heart and from there, straight to his groin. His hand is tight and fast and slick and he shoves himself into it, twists his thumb on the tip to keep from touching the cold panes of the desk. His feet brace on the carpet but nothing yields, not the give of the desk or the pressure in his hips or the breath trapped in his throat. It’s Donna’s hand now, in his mind, hers and not his own, just as rough and just as tight and faster, guiding him toward her mouth or up between her legs, and his hand knows what that feels like even if the rest of him doesn’t and he wants it, wants her, wants to come.

And that’s something neither his mind nor Snow has any control over.

He almost loses his grip on the desk when he finishes. His knees and elbows buckle, and the world lurches around him. The light is painful, so he hangs his head, and his hair plasters to his cheeks and his neck. He knows the collar of his shirt is drenched. He watches his semen drip down the side of the desk and onto the carpet. Nothing bounces back.

All Snow says is “Clean it up.”

From there, after that, it’s almost nothing for Haymitch to sink to one knee, still holding on to the desk with one hand. He slides off his right shoe and pulls off the sock, and wipes it all away. He puts his shoe back on, and stands, and when he manages to raise his head he’s staring clear over Snow, into the black glass windows and the lights of the Capitol, spinning and surging. His breath rattles, stings the walls of his throat.

He drops the sock onto Snow’s desk, right on top of the papers. Snow looks at it, then up into Haymitch’s eyes. He makes a sweeping gesture with his hand to clear everything off, but Haymitch is too quick for him, snatches up the letter-opener and stabs it down. It sticks upright in the desk mat, traps the mess right where it is. If Snow had been a little quicker, the blade would have gotten him right through his palm.

“You’re dismissed, Haymitch,” Snow says, smiling and unruffled. “Get dressed and say goodnight to Gloria. The guards will take you to her. I’ll see you after your Victory Tour.”

Haymitch pulls up his pants and underwear, and tucks in his shirt so he can wipe his hand on the tails. He grabs his jacket but doesn’t put it on either, and turns on his heel to leave. The guards open the double doors for him from the outside before he can even touch the handles. He shivers, and knows that Snow saw it, but he can’t stop shaking even after the anger flares up from the base of his spine.

He doesn’t know what path he takes through the halls, since the guards are leading. They knock on Gloria’s door for him, and she answers it, and the light that spills out over her hair—tied back, now, in two short indigo pigtails—makes sweat drip into Haymitch’s eyes.

“I’m heading out now,” he says. “But I should say goodnight.”

She nods, and looks him over, wrinkling her nose. _She can smell me,_ Haymitch thinks, _she could even know just by looking._

“Goodnight,” she says, a tremor in her voice. “And thanks for coming. Daddy left the apples with me. Do you still want to take them home?”

He doesn’t. But he tells her, “Yes. You’re welcome.”

-

“Hey, how’d it go?” Troy asks once Haymitch walks in the door.

Haymitch doesn’t answer.

Persil, sitting on the couch with an ashtray on his knee, doesn’t ask. He eyes Haymitch up and down, then shuts his eyes and shakes his head.

Troy rattles off instructions and takes the bag of apples and Haymitch’s jacket and walks him to his room. “Alessia’s gone to bed, but she’ll be up and pushing you around after prep’s through with you. You’re all packed, I’ll just add these—food?”

“Food,” Haymitch answers, scuffing out of his shoes.

“I’ll get it wrapped up nicely for your family. I’m not going with you, but I’ve left you lots of clothes for the rest of summer and the fall, instructions on how to wear them, all that. I’ll be back in the winter for the Tour, but until then you can call me for anything. Where’s your right sock?”

“I don’t know.”

Troy shrugs, and finishes taking off the last of Haymitch’s clothes. “Can’t be helped. Get yourself into the shower, all right? I’m out here with Persil if you need me.” When he pats Haymitch on the small of his back, it doesn’t feel as lascivious as it used to.

Haymitch showers quickly, follows the instructions on the little card clipped to the door for which buttons to push. Meronia, one of the girls on his prep team, signs all her notes for him with exclamation points and curlicues that dot her Is and cross her Ts, so he knows this is one of hers. _Sleep tight!_ she writes at the end, _Turn this over in the morning. See you this winter! Love, kisses, and congratulations, your prep team._

He dries off, puts on the shorts and slippers they left out for him but ignores the pyjamas. He stands in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirrors in the corner, puts his hands on his body and searches for scars. There aren’t any. The doctors missed nothing.

He goes back into the common room. Troy offers him hot chocolate but he turns it down.

“You’re right, it probably wouldn’t help you sleep,” Troy says. “Want something stronger?”

Haymitch shakes his head, no.

Between Haymitch’s silence and Persil’s, Troy probably picks up on where he ought to be and that it isn’t here. He excuses himself, finishes his drink and brushes off his hands. “Well, Haymitch, it’s been a pleasure, and I’ll call you after you get in. Trip takes two days, right? So I’ll call you on Sunday.”

“Friday,” Haymitch corrects—

—and then grips his forehead, shuts his eyes. “Sunday,” he says. “Sunday. Yeah.”

Troy gives him a quick hug, does the same to Persil, and sees himself out. The door shuts, and Haymitch stands there, suddenly aware of how cold it is.

“Did you try to hurt him?” Persil asks.

Haymitch answers, “No.”

“Did he want you?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“No.”

Persil stubs out his cigarette, and places the ashtray on the table.

-

 _Poison wells up under Maysilee’s skin in tracks and spiderwebs, thick as thorns and teeth, and Haymitch traces them with his tongue. They spread over her throat, her jaw, her collar. Lower. She holds him by the upper arms, so only his mouth can touch her. “Suck it out,” she says. “I want to live, Haymitch. Suck it out.”_

 _The wound’s on her breast, right where her ribs show. He needs to get under her skin to do it, needs to slice her open. He steadies his beak on her skin, breathes, shoves down._

The train hits a bump on the tracks, and Haymitch grabs the headboard to keep from falling. He catches it, but hits his head, and when he lets go to grasp at the pain he almost falls out of the bed.

But after that, it’s probably best to get up and deal with the world, even if Alessia hasn’t come in to wake him up yet. He looks down under the sheets, groans, lies back and thinks about hay fever and mining equipment failure and starvation until his erection goes down.

The rest of the ride is lukewarm. Haymitch showers and gets dressed, goes through the motions his prep team said he should. He’s up at breakfast before Persil but Alessia’s already there to brief him on what should—will—happen once the train pulls in to District Twelve. The cameras will be waiting, she says, and Haymitch calls her out on that, asks how the cameras got there first. Hovercraft, she says. _Well then, why are we traveling by train?_ It’s making an entrance, Alessia explains, and it’s tradition, and Haymitch, eat your breakfast.

Persil hauls himself to the dining car at about ten-thirty in the morning, and lights up cigarette after cigarette, which drives Alessia off and relieves Haymitch of having to listen to her anymore.

“As far as I know,” Persil says, once she’s gone and all that’s left is smoke and bread and coffee, “the cameras won’t actually follow us home. After all the business in the town square, there are a few family interviews, but they’ll take care of that at the Mayor’s house. I called ahead to your mother; she’s making dinner for us and the Willistons. But until then, it’s probably best if you don’t talk about Donna. You don’t want to draw attention to her if you can help it.”

“So they didn’t interview her?”

“Oh, they did. But she’s got two strikes against her already. One, Maysilee. The Capitol actually saw that develop, and they don’t want to forget it just yet. It’s part of your charm. And two, the more plans Snow has for you, the farther away you want your girl.”

Haymitch nods and pours himself another glass of apple juice. “I don’t care how the cameras spin it,” he says, “if she looks at me, I’m looking back.”

“Look all you want, but don’t touch. And don’t _talk_. There’s plenty of time for talking later.”

 _And touching,_ Haymitch says to himself, and fiddles with the bracelet on his wrist. _If she still wants me._

He doesn’t think she’ll be concerned about him killing seven people, or at least not about how. Her uncle is the town butcher, and Donna poaches, hunts out of the district’s bounds because her father and her uncle haven’t spoken for ten years, since her grandfather left the shop to one and not the other. When he was trying to find a shorter route home from Armeria’s workshop, Haymitch walked into one of Donna’s snares. He and Donna had spoken before that at school, and danced one or two turns at the harvest festival, maybe made eyes a couple of times, but Haymitch hadn’t loved her until she cut him down from that tree and dragged him under the fence. She won’t care that he’s a killer now. She might even like it.

But Donna only ever wants to be ignored if she’s doing something wrong, never if she’s doing something right. Just about everyone knows they’re together. They’ve kissed in public. She came in to the mayor’s house to see him off. Everyone will notice if they don’t kiss hello.

 _So much for agency, Snow,_ Haymitch thinks.

-

He almost doesn’t notice the cameras at all, coming off the train. Everything else hits him first: natural light, the smells of coal and candy and sweat, cheering and banners and unobstructed wind. He’s home. He’s home, and he’s alive, and in the face of that the men in camera-suits don’t even register. When they do, it’s just for a blink, a flash, an acknowledgment.

And then Reade is flying across the platform like an oversized squirrel and tackles Haymitch against the train, almost staggers him into the gap. Haymitch holds on tight, holds _him_ tight, because the last time he hugged his brother he thought it would be the last and that makes this time like the first. Their foreheads clash together, and then their hands when they untangle themselves and stand apart.

“You made it,” Reade says, like he believed it all along.

“Of course I made it, you idiot, you think I’d leave you behind?” Haymitch hugs him again, trapping their clasped hands between them this time.

“Not for a second.” Reade grins, and is probably about to say more when Haymitch’s mother pushes him aside and wraps her arms around Haymitch too. He’s been taller than her for the last year or so and it’s still strange. She’s wearing a nicer dress than he ever remembers seeing her in, and a hat that has to be new, but she still smells like the mines under it all and Haymitch hadn’t known how much he missed that.

“Mom,” he says, because everything else is caught in his throat.

She doesn’t say anything else, just holds him, breathes him in too. His shoulder’s getting wet, she must be crying, but it’s less embarrassing than it was the day he left. He’s dimly aware of Reade shaking Persil’s hand and thanking him, somewhere to his left, but even the clicking cameras and cheering crowd are just a cloud of noise right now. He’s home. He’s alive. His mother didn’t have to watch him die.

It’s harder, after that, after she pulls away and thanks Persil too, and Haymitch sees everyone else gathered close to the platform. Greer’s parents, yellowed and sullen but still putting on a good face to see Haymitch home. Stearn’s father and brothers, five pairs of hard Seam eyes letting Haymitch know who he isn’t. Mister and Missus Donner and Columbine, who is covering her face and messing up her hair and looks like she can barely stand.

The cameras don’t have to come any closer to zoom in. This is a preview for the Victory Tour, and Haymitch knows it, knows he’ll have to greet twice as many families as anyone who’s won before him. Well, twice plus two. He puts a hand on his mother’s shoulder to signal that he’s starting to head down the platform, but doesn’t check to see if she’ll be watching him go. It doesn’t matter, she’ll probably see it on the reruns. The thought makes his breakfast push against the walls of his throat but he gulps and takes the stairs down.

Greer’s father offers a hand, and Haymitch takes it in both his own, shakes once. He didn’t plan anything to say, and he knows he’ll have to plan for the other districts now, but that doesn’t help him here. “I’m sorry,” he says. He remembers how Greer died, up on the mountain, with her foot caught between rocks as the lava washed over her; the editors made sure to put it in the replay, so Haymitch would know. They told the whole eruption from her perspective.

“Not your fault,” Greer’s mother says, and her father nods in agreement, hands Haymitch off to her. “Try to start bringing more of us home, all right?”

Haymitch nods, and glances back at Persil. “I was planning on that,” he says, “takes two, after all.”

The Hawthornes are much less open, when Haymitch makes his way to them, but the fourth brother, Silas, just one year past reaping age, is the one to make a move. “You stuck it to them,” he says. “That’s something.”

Haymitch smiles. The Hawthornes have been a prickly bunch since long before Haymitch was born. Persil and Armeria are old enough to remember when the miners still had something like a union. So is Mister Hawthorne, and so was his wife, and his wife’s father had been the union’s head, until sometime between the 25th and 26th Games when there wasn’t a union anymore.

“I did my worst,” Haymitch agrees, and gives Silas a quick hug. “Stearn would’ve done the same if he made it.” And he probably would have, too, if the Career pack hadn’t gotten to him. He’d allied with one of the District Eleven girls. She’d gone on to fourth place without him.

The brothers take him down the line, shake his hand and nod their brusque congratulations, and Mister Hawthorne says in Haymitch’s ear, out of the cameras’ range, “We still trust your rigs. Don’t live off what the Capitol gives you. That ain’t living.”

“Don’t I know it,” Haymitch agrees, and lets him go.

That leaves him right in front of Columbine Donner.

This, Haymitch planned.

He takes Maysilee’s token out of his pocket, a little gold mockingjay pin. She’d given it to him when she died, said she didn’t like the look of birds at all anymore, and he didn’t blame her. _They’ll take it to your family,_ he said then, _as long as you keep it,_ but she told him _No, you take it to them when you win. Or when you jump. I think I want you to win, though._ He took it. She died. He won.

“Here,” he says to Columbine, unfolding his hand. “Like I promised.”

She’d already been crying, but now she’s sobbing, throwing herself into his arms. She fits right where Maysilee fit, of course she does, they’re _twins_ , but Haymitch is still surprised and blown back, unsure of where to put his hands. The cameras love it, and he sees them, marching toward him like ants toward a hill.

Donna’s on the outskirts, over their sculpted shoulders.

Haymitch can’t help but think she’s the most beautiful thing in the world right now—her hair’s off her face and her eyes are like coal just before it crumbles, her lips just slightly parted like there’s nothing more to say. Haymitch meets her eyes enough that she’ll know he meant to, and then closes them to console Columbine for the cameras, for the Capitol, for Snow.

Donna doesn’t approach him for the rest of the afternoon. It could be because she’s smart enough not to. It could be because she’s going to break it off with him. But whether the second’s true or not, the first _definitely_ is, and he can’t blame her for the second.

It still trips him up, every time he feels an apple seed scratch across his wrist.

-

“So, is it the hero’s welcome you were waiting for?” Flickerman asks, sitting across from him on the mayor’s couch like it’s his own.

“We’ll see how welcome it is when the cameras leave,” Haymitch says. “I don’t think that’s the kind of thing I can judge on two hours in the town square.”

“You’ve got a point there, Haymitch. But I’m impressed! I’ve never had a victor from District Twelve in my time, so I’ve never been, and I have to say you seem like one big family.”

Haymitch snickers. “Well, the family that works together stays together.”

“Speaking of work, I hear you’re continuing your apprenticeship?”

“I’d get bored otherwise.”

Flickerman laughs. “Well, that’s what talents are for! I’m sure you’re just brimming with them, Haymitch. Have you given any thought to what your talent might be?”

“No,” Haymitch lies. “But I’m good at school, so I’m sure I’ll figure something out there.”

“You’re planning on going to school as well? That’s you all through, Haymitch. Why, when I see you on the Victory Tour it’ll be like your Games never happened!”

“I think we both know that’s impossible.” Haymitch leans onto his knees, tilting his head and smiling the way Flickerman seems to like so much. “But just because the Games happened doesn’t mean my life has to stop, or stop being mine.”

In the corner, out of the cameras’ reach, Persil makes a _cut that out_ gesture across his neck.

“Besides,” Haymitch goes on, acknowledging Persil with a quick nod, “I’m going to be spending a lot of time in the Capitol. I’d better become someone they can talk to about more than just my Games. And whatever else happens, I want to be the best mentor I can be, to the tributes for the fifty-first and after.”

-

Just as Persil promised, the cameras leave them alone at sunset, and dinner at the new house in the Victor’s Village is dinner for seven: Haymitch’s family, Persil, and Donna and her parents. Haymitch winds through the house until they arrive, learns it, which halls go where and which rooms are his. His bedroom—which has its own bathroom attached, there are three in the house, all of them with showers—is half the size of the house he lived in before the Games. The thought of not having to share a room with Reade anymore is a relief, since Reade snores and tosses and they’re both growing up. The shower isn’t like the Capitol showers, which Haymitch is thankful for, just hot and cold, but still stronger in either direction than the one in the old house. And there’s a basement, which is like a house all to itself, with a second refrigerator and a heater and more outlets than the house has appliances to plug in.

Donna and her parents show up with a cake from the Mellarks, and Haymitch’s mom covers her mouth and blushes and tells them, “You didn’t have to, you’re our guests.”

“We didn’t,” Mister Williston says, grinning ear-to-ear. “Nicke came by with it while you were at the mayor’s house. Now you can tell him and his mother they didn’t have to, if you want, but I’m pretty sure we were obligated to bring it here.”

The adults and Reade laugh, but Haymitch can’t bring himself to join in, the way Donna’s standing on the threshold, saying nothing at all. The adults usher themselves inside, and Donna makes a motion with her hand for Haymitch to come out to her. He does.

“Did you want her?” she asks. Haymitch wasn’t taller than her when they got together. He is now, by two inches, enough to make a difference, enough to see where her ponytail is starting to come undone.

He tells her the truth. “Not like I want you.”

She nods, shuts her eyes, and takes a deep breath. He watches the way it fills her chest, how it strains the seams of her shirt. The sun is down, but the moon’s high and almost full, and there isn’t a cloud to block the summer stars.

“All right,” she says, “good.” Then she shoves him up against the doorjamb and claims his mouth.

It’s good, so good, and Haymitch would kiss her properly if he could stop laughing. He doesn’t know what’s wrong, maybe he hit his head a little hard, or maybe everything’s just snapped somewhere at the base of his skull, but kissing Donna and holding her and wrapping his hand in her ponytail is the funniest goddamn thing in the world. It’s even funnier that it doesn’t stop her from kissing him, grabbing the sides of his face and holding him right where she wants him— _she wants him_ , maybe that’s why this is the funniest thing in the world—and pushing her leg right up between his. All right. Yes. That’s less funny. And better. And Haymitch thinks he can stop laughing and kiss her for real, now, let her know just how right this feels.

And that would be Reade wolf-whistling, wouldn’t it.

Yeah. Right there at the base of the stairs, making fish-faces.

Haymitch breaks away from Donna enough to yell, “Mom, tell Reade to cut it out!”

“Tell Haymitch to stop making out with her in the doorway, he’s letting the bugs in!” Reade counters.

It occurs to Haymitch that they were just kissing, like that, within ten feet of their parents. He can’t help blushing, but now Donna’s the one laughing.

Haymitch’s mother crosses her arms and taps her fingers, looking all three of them over. “Reade, lay off your brother. Haymitch, don’t let the bugs in. And Donna, you know I adore you, but you can make him wait a little, hm?” She smirks.

“— _Mom,_ ” Haymitch stammers. “That’s just gross.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Donna says, and takes Haymitch by the wrist to pull him out of the doorway. “We can wait until after dinner.”

And dinner goes much better than Haymitch could have expected. His mother isn’t an amazing cook but she’s a solid one and apparently solid becomes actually _good_ when she has more to work with. She’s baked two trout as big as Haymitch’s thigh, with butter instead of oil and sharp fresh herbs, over potatoes and turnips and blueberries. When Haymitch asks, yes, she sent Reade to buy the blueberries at the Hob, not from the grocer. The bread is from the mayor by way of the Mellarks, and the herbs and greens are from Garrett Everdeen, who said to pass his congratulations along to Haymitch, since he didn’t go to the welcoming ceremony. Haymitch doesn’t blame him—Garrett started at the mines this year, he probably doesn’t have as much time for his side business as he’d like. How he’s crazy enough to head off into the meadow when there are cameras and Peacekeepers running around, Haymitch doesn’t know, but if it works, it works. And Persil surprises everyone by breaking out two bottles of wine from the Capitol, gifts from his ladyfriends in Districts Four and Eleven.

By the time they break into the cake, everyone is laughing and lopsided and, most importantly, no one is talking about the Games. Other things happened, these last few weeks, the world kept turning and the mines kept cranking and school is still in summer half-days but hasn’t been cancelled for over a week. Reade’s class is neck-deep in weather patterns and occluded fronts; Donna’s class is up to conic sections and she hates it. Mister Williston and Haymitch’s mother have both been sent on a new route but they’ve run across an old seam and are still waiting for clearance from the Capitol. Missus Williston found a wallet in one of the coats she was working on at the tailor’s, and that would have been humorous enough if it had belonged to the person who dropped those pants off instead of the Deputy Head Peacekeeper. Of course she told the tailor everything, but neither of them quite knows what it means, let alone what to do. Persil is eyeing the corners of the room but he laughs along with the rest, says he’ll look into it.

The cake is stuffed with summer cherries and whipped cream and half of it is still there when everyone’s had his fill. The debate about who takes what home is surprisingly vehement but in the end they settle on the Willistons taking the last of the fish and potatoes if the Abernathys keep the bread and the cake. The wine’s long gone. Persil and Mrs. Williston head out on the porch to smoke while Reade clears the dishes.

Donna puts her hand on Haymitch’s knee, under the table, and looks across it to catch her father’s eye. “Dad? Missus Abernathy? That thing we talked about, is it still true?”

For a second, it’s quiet enough to hear Persil exhaling his smoke, outside. Haymitch can feel Mister Williston sizing him up like, well, a freshly killed pig, looking between Haymitch and Donna at least three times by Haymitch’s count. And his mother raises her eyebrow the way she usually saves for when Haymitch is going to be scrubbing the floors and cleaning the gutters and shoveling not just their walkway’s snow but all the snow on the block.

“It’s all right by me,” Haymitch’s mother says, and hands up Mister Williston’s plate to Reade. “You both deserve as much.”

Mister Williston sighs. “Yes. Just make sure you get up tomorrow morning.”

Donna leans across the table to kiss her father on the cheek, and Haymitch might have had a glass of wine too many to piece together just what’s going on. She pulls him to his feet and darts around the table to hug Haymitch’s mother and thank her for dinner, and to say she’ll see her in the morning.

 _Oh,_ Haymitch thinks.

“C’mon,” she says, drawing Haymitch toward the stairs. “Your room’s on the second floor, right? You have a _second floor_. You know how amazing that is, right?”

“Donna—” he barely gets out, “are you—”

“I sat here and watched you on the damn television for over two weeks,” she says, once she crosses the top of the stairs, and looks left and right to guess where his room is. She chooses left, and goes on, “And I watched you team up with that girl the way I’d always wished you’d team up and hunt with me. And I was jealous, Haymitch,” she shuts the door behind both of them, leans against it, finds the lightswitch, “jealous not just because she’s prettier than me but because you needed her. You don’t need people, Haymitch. You want them, sometimes more than you can stand, but you’re too smart to need people and you needed her.”

“She’s not prettier than you,” Haymitch says, because of all the things that are tangling in his throat that comes out strongest.

“Flatterer,” Donna says, and reaches over her shoulder to tie back her hair a little neater, the way she does before she hunts. “But it’s true. You needed her. And you didn’t need me, not like that, not to survive. And I thought maybe if you came back, you wouldn’t need anything at all.”

“Donna, you know that’s not true.”

“I know now,” she says. Her eyes level on his, burning behind the grey. “But I’m telling you what I felt then, Haymitch. And I’m telling you that I watched you on the television and I turned to my mom and dad and said, ‘If that boy comes back alive, I am gonna love that boy. And if he still wants me, I’m probably gonna marry that boy’.”

The rest of the words tangling in Haymitch’ throat swell back into his blood and drop two feet south.

“And if I’m gonna marry that boy,” she says, softer now, glancing at the floor, “then I’m gonna make sure he needs me.”

If Haymitch takes a step forward, just one step, he can reach out to touch her face. He takes it, but his hands are shaking, and they only still when he settles his fingertips on her jaw.

There aren’t any words; she doesn’t wait, and he doesn’t try to say them. He kisses her the way he wanted to downstairs when he couldn’t stop laughing, and she cards her hands through his hair, holds him against her. Her breath comes short but he gives her his, lets her drink him down until sparks fly behind his eyes. They stagger toward the bed, and he whacks his hip against the footboard and cries out into her mouth but all she does is cover the bump with her hand, push him onto the mattress. She straddles his thighs, tilts him up to kiss him deeper and he holds on tight. If that doesn’t say he needs her, no words will.

They’ve made quick work of each other’s clothes before, but this time feels quicker, final, raw. She yanks back on his hair and kisses his throat, and the kisses turn to scrapes and ragged strokes when he palms her breasts, stretches his fingers between her ribs. She still has her scars. He loves them, every one of them, follows them with his fingers the way he wants to with his tongue, if she ever lets him down, lefts him go. It’s nothing he hasn’t touched before but now it’s a prelude and not a destination and he lets himself feel what he always holds back, lets it get him hard enough for her to grind against.

When she pulls back to get a look at him and a hand on him, she stares down his chest, at everything that’s missing. He tries to apologize but a twist of her hand shuts him up, and then he finds that her mouth remembers everything, his scrapes and scars and the trail of hair down from his navel to his groin, and he’d be so relieved about that if he could feel anything but the heat of her tongue. Her lips close around him and something explodes behind his eyes. He doesn’t know where to put his hands but he has to touch her, anywhere, now, anywhere that’ll keep her close. He finds her shoulders, her hair, not so neat now, not with his hand tangled in it and the strands so good and cool between his fingers, when everything else is her mouth and her heat. She hasn’t taken him that deep and he can’t help wanting more, but when his hips strain up she holds him down, pins him to the bed and pulls back just to kiss him, and then away.

“You want more, we can have more,” she says, stretching the corners of her mouth, “as long as you pull out before you come. I don’t have a condom.”

“I’ll get them for next time,” he says, still trying to rock his hips a little. “Are you sure?”

“You want to feel how sure I am?” She laughs, gets up from her knees and tugs down her pants down.

“I need to,” he corrects. And it’s true, so true.

She stretches out on the bed, and he settles atop her, rests his fingers between her legs. Her hand comes down to guide him, like the first time he touched her. She’s wet for him, and now he knows it, and just knowing is enough to make him resolve, make him push in. He forgets how to breathe, and when he tries to remember it comes out as laughter. She laughs too. He likes the way it makes her move under him, around him, and then it blows past _likes_ and into _needs_ , and they move together, work out how.

It’s almost over far too soon, takes Haymitch’s last scrap of will to tell her, _I’m close, I’m sorry,_ and she says “Don’t be sorry, just keep your hand there and we’ll—I’ll—”

He’s in her enough to feel it start, and he knows that if he stayed, he’d have joined her.

No one’s ever slept in this bed, and it’s a sticky mess, and Haymitch plain doesn’t care. They lie there tangled together, and he kisses her, all of her, kisses himself off of her (which is weird, but feels right, the way all of this feels right).

“First thing tomorrow morning,” he says, “I am going to the Hob, and I don’t care what I have to trade, I am buying us condoms.”

She laughs. “I thought you were coming to school.”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday.”

“Monday,” Donna corrects.

Haymitch takes a deep breath and shuts his eyes. “Monday,” he says. And he holds her shoulders against the bed and kisses her, because that should shut up whatever’s going on in the back of his mind.

-

 _Maysilee sews up his arm, holds the thread with her teeth as she ties it off. Her pale pink tongue slips under his skin and he can’t help giving a start. She looks up, pushes the fringe of her hair off her face, all rich gold, and glances over her shoulder._

 _“You want to,” she whispers, right into his skin where they can’t hear, not yet._

 _He nods._

 _“It’s a good idea,” she says, spreads her fingers on his thigh and slides up his body. “And I want it too.”_

 _But she doesn’t kiss him, of course she doesn’t, everything is poison so his words are poison too. She drinks it out of the rest of him, the sweat on his neck, the grime on his cheeks, the thin trail of blood that leaks out past her stitches on his arm. He takes all he can get too, wipes her fingers clean with the flat of his tongue. Fever shoves against his ears and around his eyes and down, spreads in his chest and his hips no matter how close he gets them to hers._

 _He calls her by name. She opens her eyes. They’re black and faceted like cameras._

Off, off, _off_ , he has to get her off him, get those eyes off his face and out of her head—he throws her off his body, traps her arms over her head and tears for her face—

“Haymitch!”

—Donna. _Donna_ , not Maysilee, not the Capitol in Maysilee’s face, not poison. Donna, next to him in bed, naked, sharing his sweat. The sun’s almost up. Her eyes are grey, blown wide and staring at him like she sizes up game.

He fights his hand down into a fist, makes his fingers retreat from clawing out the wrong eyes. She pushes her wrists against his grasp and he lets her go, lets her trace her fingers through his hair and down his back.

“Nightmare?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he breathes. “Sorry.”

She lifts her thigh, rubs it against his erection. “Want to wake up?”

He sinks down onto her, wraps himself in her.

-

All through breakfast, Reade makes ostentatious slurping noises with his spoon. Haymitch decides he’ll never be able to look at strawberries the same way again, after the way Donna eats them. They head to school for a summer half-day, nine to one, and it takes longer from the Victor’s Village but they make it barely on time. The teacher gives Haymitch a packet with all the work he missed since the Reaping, which he works on during class while everyone else goes on ahead. The math is all formulae, the literature all busywork, the civics all compulsory as usual.

Everyone is watching him, and he knows it, but feeling a hundred pairs of eyes on his back as he heads out to Armeria’s is somehow even _less_ welcome than a hundred invisible cameras. He takes one of his own routes, avoids the heart of town until he can’t. The Peacekeepers eye him sideways under their white helmets when he shows his pass at the east gate, hops on the two o’clock van with the late-lunch miners. Mister Williston is with them, and Haymitch isn’t sure how, or whether, to thank him for yesterday, so instead he says that he and Donna both got to school okay and on time. _Good,_ Mister Williston says. _Come over for dinner on Saturday, if you can._

Armeria puts him to work once he walks in the shop door, sorting and measuring wire for the first hour or so, then disassembling a chock engine once she finishes diagramming the source of its failure. Haymitch gets himself covered in grease like it’s his very first day on the job and Armeria reams him out for it, but smiles all through, even though she sends him home with all the laundry for the week.

He doesn’t get on the same van back as his mother, so he diverts to the Hob on the way home. Some people are already packing up, but lucky for Haymitch, Laura Undersee’s still there with the surpluses from her aunt’s store. He pays market price for a tube of toothpaste and two boxes of condoms. Garrett Everdeen slaps him on the shoulder and sings something absolutely filthy where everyone can hear and join in, so Haymitch jeers back, opens a box and throws him one condom and says Garrett should swing by the apothecary’s shop later like everyone knows he wants to.

Haymitch heads home, and his mother walks in the door about fifteen minutes later. Reade takes care of dinner as usual, the rest of yesterday’s rolls with ground meat and sharp cheese and summer squash.

“And I found these in the refrigerator,” he says, bringing out the caramel apples. “From the Capitol, right? Nicke never makes them like this.”

“—yeah,” Haymitch says, before he remembers to swallow. “Yeah. They’re from the president.”

The fiftieth Hunger Games happened. They happened, and Haymitch can feel it most where he isn’t supposed to feel it at all.

-

The thirtieth of July is a Saturday, or possibly a Thursday. In the end, it doesn’t matter.

When Haymitch comes back from Armeria’s, Reade hasn’t made dinner. He isn’t at home. It gets dark. As soon as his mother is back to watch the house and call the mayor to make sure people in town keep a look out as well, Haymitch and Donna head out to ask around, check the woods. By eleven at night, they aren’t the only ones looking.

Rill and Silas Hawthorne find most of Reade just barely under the fence. Donna finds Reade’s right leg about ten years into the woods.

-

Donna stays over that night. She and Haymitch don’t sleep, but don’t have sex either. The house is far too quiet when Haymitch’s mother stops crying, just before sunrise.

Even if it weren’t Sunday, or Friday, Haymitch wouldn’t be going to school, but Donna has to head out and check her snares. “I’ll find whatever killed Reade and bring it back so you can flay it alive,” she says, snatches a roll and an apple off the counter in the kitchen. “That’ll fix everything up good.”

Haymitch doesn’t even want to think about it. “No. Feed your family first, and be careful.”

“Being careful never got me anything I wanted in life.”

He grabs her, holds her in the door, lets the flies fly in. “You don’t understand,” he says, “I need you,” and pulls her in close. “Just check your snares. Don’t shoot today. Don’t draw it to you. You’re a hunter, not a killer.”

“Yeah, and you’d know the difference, Haymitch.”

He throws her back into the house. She topples onto the stairs, and he grabs her wrists, pins her. “I’d know,” he says, doesn’t mean to shout but his chest is shoving the words out, right into her face. “I’d know, and do you think I want that for you?”

She pushes against his grip, and it isn’t enough. “What about what I want?”

“You want to live, don’t you? You want to come home tonight?” He shakes his head, cant bring himself to let go, can’t look away. “Reade’s dead. Reade’s dead and I can’t ask him how, or what the hell he was doing out there. You think I want that to happen to you?”

“It’s my place, out there. They’re my woods.”

“They’re the Capitol’s woods.”

“So you’re speaking for the Capitol now, are you, Haymitch?”

He slugs her in the jaw.

Nothing happens. Nothing happens for a good long while after that, not behind his eyes or in his throat or anywhere else. His fingers hang slack, and then they start to shake, and he loses his grip on her, on this, on everything.

Apologies fall off his lips without him having the strength to form them, apologies and curses, and her name, so much her name. She rubs her cheek and cracks her neck and tells him to get off her, and he does, retreats clear to the doorway, puts the whole front hall between them.

“This isn’t the goddamn Arena, Haymitch,” she says, soft and low, the way she tells him things in the dark.

“I know,” he says. It hurts to. “It’s worse.”

She comes to him, and he shrinks away, but she takes him by the shoulders, holds him against the door.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he says.

“I shouldn’t have said,” she whispers before she kisses him quick. “It’s fine. You do it again, though, it won’t be.”

“Please don’t go looking for it.” He settles his hands on her hips, thumbs in the beltloops of her pants, like that could keep her close. “Just check the snares. Don’t shoot. Don’t draw it out.”

“I’ll do what I need,” she says, and he knows she means it. “And if I haven’t caught anything, my family’s coming here for dinner. But I am checking _all_ of the snares.”

“All right,” he breathes. “All right.”

She kisses him like she means it too, like she could mean more if they had enough time. He wants it to, wants her to cut through the shock and the hurt and get under his skin. He knows she could, the way she moves against him, the way her hands staunch the sweat on his neck and wrists.

“I’ll come tonight,” she says, still close enough to breathe.

He tells her, “You’d better,” and opens the door himself.

She keeps herself close when she crosses the threshold. “I hope we didn’t wake your mom.”

“I’ll check on her,” he says, and gives Donna one more quick kiss. “See you later.”

“You will,” she says, and sets off for the woods without looking back. He watches her go, and when he can’t, he stares at Persil’s house across the square, watches the porch swing rock back and forth with no one in it.

He doesn’t know how long he stands there, but the sun is above the trees when he goes back inside, heads through the house to his mother’s room to knock on the door. “Mom?”

She doesn’t answer. He knocks harder.

-

The apothecary, Mister Teller, and his daughter Ilona, don’t do much good when someone’s already dead. Haymitch has been sitting in the chair next to his mother’s dresser, tangling himself in the blanket from her bed, for the better part of three hours. Persil’s here, and he makes Haymitch drink water every few minutes, but other than that not much registers. Noon comes, and then afternoon. Maybe night, at some point.

“We can’t figure out more without conducting an autopsy,” Mister Teller says, not that Haymitch hears much of it, “but as far as I can tell, she died peacefully. Did she drink anything strange last night?”

“Not that I know,” Haymitch says. “I don’t think she drank at all.”

“She did,” Persil corrects, “but I drank from the same bottle. So did Chuck Undersee. I’m fine, and you should check with him.”

“I will when I head back to town,” Mister Teller says. Ilona draws the sheets over Haymitch’s mother’s eyes and a part of him thinks _no, stop, it’s too soon,_ but nothing in him moves.

“I’m sorry, Haymitch,” Ilona whispers, wringing her hands. “Do you want us to send the Peacekeepers? They can bring in one of their medics, you might find out more that way.”

“No,” Haymitch says. “Thank you.” _I know._

Somewhere over the shoulder that Persil’s holding onto, Haymitch can hear arrangements being made, people to come in and bear her away, a place to dig a grave right next to Reade’s. _A shame,_ Mister Teller says, _that she lived to see one child cheat death only for the other to die,_ and Haymitch is too drained to correct him. _I didn’t cheat. I exploited the rules._

“Come on,” Persil says, closer. “Let’s get you out of that chair, all right?”

He means _you don’t want to see them take her away_ , the same way a loaf of bread from the sky means _stay with her, you need her_. He’s right. Haymitch stands, but takes the blanket with him, drags it behind him to the kitchen the way he used to in a house a quarter this size, chasing Reade like a ghost. No one’s going to yell at him about that ever again.

Persil lights up a cigarette, uses a left-out breakfast plate as an ashtray. No one’s going to yell at him about that either.

It’s the height of summer. It’s August tomorrow. Why is it so cold?

“Is this what I won for?” he asks, because Persil might well be the only one who knows.

Haymitch expects it, but it still stings when Persil tells him, “Yes.”

“Is that why you don’t have anyone either? Did he get you too?”

Persil exhales a line of smoke that fades before it hits the ceiling fan. “He didn’t get me. But it’s why. A backwards why. Because I couldn’t have anyone, and when I could I didn’t want to.”

“You could have told me.”

“Your family would’ve still died. The only difference would be that you’d be dead with them. You don’t want that. This hurts, like the Games hurt, but it’s not going to kill you, because you don’t want to die. If you want to die, you don’t win. That’s why you won, Haymitch.”

Because he ran at the starting gun. Because he killed seven other kids. Because he let Maysilee go.

“Come on,” Persil says. “You want something that’ll knock you out a little?”

Haymitch shakes his head. “Donna’s coming back.”

“Donna? Where’d she go?”

“To check her traps,” Haymitch says. “She’s coming back here. I’ll wait for her until she—”

Persil stubs the cigarette out like he’s trying to get a rig to start. “You let her out to check her traps?”

“She’s got to feed her family, Persil.”

“Why the hell did you let her go?”

“She wouldn’t let me make her stay.”

“You just made the same damn choice you made with Maysilee, you _stupid kid_.”

Haymitch shoves the chair back, topples it all the way to the wall. “I am not a stupid kid, you asshole—“

“What’d you do to Snow, Haymitch? What’d you show him?”

“That’s none of your damn business!”

“It wasn’t your mother’s business, was it? Or Reade’s?”

Haymitch trips on the blanket running out into the hall.

“Haymitch—”

“If Donna comes back, you keep her here,” he yells back into the kitchen, already bolting out the door.

-

He damn near drags Garrett Everdeen out of the Hob by his hair, says he needs his help, there’s no way in hell he’s going out there alone. Garrett understands, more than anyone Haymitch can think of right now. He takes Haymitch to a hollow log in the woods where he stores some of his weapons, gets out a bow for himself and a couple of hunting knives he says Haymitch can pay him back for later.

Garrett knows the woods, but Haymitch knows Donna’s route, has since he crossed the wrong snare two years ago, and once they find the start of it Haymitch can follow the rest. But Garrett knows how many hours it’s been since set foot here, and from the start, it’s too many. Seven. Seven. Seven. She hasn’t been here since morning.

Afternoon shifts toward evening, and in an hour or so it’ll be too dark to search. They stop caring what they startle, take the trail faster, and once Haymitch shouts her name and scatters a tree of mockingjays it’s too late to take it back. They steal the sound, chatter it through the sky like hail, like lava, like an avalanche. Garrett sings to shush them, _Are you coming to the tree?_

They haven’t quite quieted down when Garrett says, “Wait. That’s not supposed to grow here,” and kneels to look at a plant.

“Garrett, this isn’t the time—”

“No, look,” he says. And he slides aside to reveal a white rose without a hedge, stuck upright in the ground as if it has roots.

The rose is like a cairn, and Haymitch follows up, where it points.

The bruise his knuckles left on Donna’s jaw is the least of her wounds. But from down here, it’s hard to tell if they’re from a struggle or a fight. They’ll have to cut her down and untangle her before they know, if they can ever know.

-

There are more roses waiting on his kitchen table when he comes back to the Victor’s Village, wrapped in plastic and glistening with spirals of glitter. Persil hands him the card, and says nothing.

 _I’m sorry for your loss. I don’t think I’m supposed to know about it. I don’t know what else I could possibly say, so Daddy said I could send these. They’re from his garden._

 _Please come and say hello after your Victory Tour, if you still want to._

 _ ~~Love,~~ Gloria_

-

Haymitch Abernathy wakes up on his seventeenth birthday, and he doesn’t know what day it is.


End file.
